


The Dandelion of the Dark Peak

by persephone_garnata



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, M/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-18 08:40:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29240754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/persephone_garnata/pseuds/persephone_garnata
Summary: Jaskier is a folk musician, while Geralt has retired from The Witchers after being injured and is now a sheep farmer in Derbyshire. And they were room-mates...
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 12
Kudos: 33





	1. January

**Author's Note:**

> This is a modern-day AU set in Britain, but there is some magic in the setting. It's not RPF, although I have borrowed some aspects of the actors' real lives (eg Joey Batey's birthday is on New Year's Day).  
> The plan is to write 12 chapters, one corresponding to each month of the year, and to post each month's chapter at the beginning of the following month. I apologise in advance if I ever slip my self-imposed schedule.  
> I will add more tags, warnings, and a rating as the story progresses. Just to set expectations if you're not sure whether to start reading or not, I'm anticipating it will end up as an 'E' rating and it may need a warning for Graphic Depictions of Violence.

**January**

He was sitting at a window table in the Candlelight Cafe, on the corner of a back street in Bloomsbury. It was within walking distance of his parents’ house - although he’d driven here anyway. It was the only place on the street that was open on New Year’s Day, and it was indeed lit by candles, albeit electric ones as real ones would have been too much of a fire hazard. The windows were fogged over with condensation, and every time the door opened there was a blast of cold air from the frost-covered world outside.

Through the foggy window Jaskier could just about make out the looming art deco tower of Aretuza House, and if he craned his neck a bit he could see his van, parked somewhat illegally on the kerbside. He hoped that, since it was a Bank Holiday, nobody would bother to come and give him a ticket. He had most of his most precious possessions in a good-quality-but-by-now-battered rucksack, stashed beneath the table, and his most precious possession, his handmade lute, sat in its case on a chair next to him. He sat there, nursing his oatmilk cappuccino and breakfast banana bran muffin, trying to work out where on Earth he could go from here.

‘Happy new year,’ said Ciri dryly, as she slid into the seat opposite and set down her cup of tea. Earl Grey. He could smell the bergamot from here. What sort of sociopath drank Earl Grey in the morning? And with milk too. Absolute barbarism. He would never quite understand the way posh people just did whatever they liked and didn’t care what anyone thought about them.

‘Happy new year my arse,’ he mumbled.

‘And happy birthday too,’ she added.

‘Having a birthday on New Year’s Day sucks double this year,’ he said.

‘Well, if it helps, I broke up with Dara,’ she said.

Jaskier raised his eyebrows. ‘Why?’

Ciri shrugged. ‘I guess I realised I was with him more to piss off my grandmother than because I actually loved him. I mean, I like him, don’t get me wrong, but - well, you try spending your Christmas holiday on a hippie commune in Hertfordshire with no hot water.’

‘Brokilon Forest not all it’s cracked up to be?’ asked Jaskier. ‘I thought Dara said it was a place of peace and harmony.’

‘Peace and harmony, maybe. Hot water, no. Heating, also no. And did I mention they like to dance naked at the solstice? At the _winter solstice,_ Jas! In bloody December in the dark. With no hot water. We had a row after I said I wanted to go somewhere I could wash my hair and get a bacon sandwich, and Dara said the Brokilon people - they call themselves Dryads if you can believe it - he said the Dryads don’t believe in chemical cleaning products or eating animals, and I said in that case I didn’t want to stay there, and then he said he likes it there, says it’s his home, and that I’m just spoiled.’

‘He has a point,’ said Jaskier. ‘Although I’m thinking of doing Veganuary this year.’

Mostly because the concept of veganism annoyed his parents, if he was honest with himself.

‘Well, whatever,’ said Ciri with the kind of shrug only someone who’d grown up in an actual palace could master. ‘But if I had to choose between staying with Dara on the one hand, and eating bacon and washing my hair ever again on the other - well, let’s just say I got in the TT that very night, drove into London, and I stayed at the Dorchester over New Years.’

With impeccable timing, the waiter came over at that very moment.

‘Bacon, brie and cranberry panini?’ he said.

‘Oh yes,’ said Ciri. He put down a plate with a grilled sandwich, oozing melted cheese and cranberry sauce. It smelled delicious, and Jaskier could totally see why Ciri would throw over her boyfriend in favour of food.

She immediately took a large bite, and then sat there for several seconds fanning her open mouth and muttering ‘hot hot hot.’ Jaskier flapped his napkin at her ineffectually and polished off his banana bran muffin. Eventually she swallowed her mouthful, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and said:

‘So how was your Christmas? Not great, I’m guessing from your text.’

No. Not great at all. Hence why he’d messaged her after midnight, begging her to come and meet him here at ten in the morning on New Year’s Day.

This had been his favourite cafe as a teenager, a little oasis away from his family home, and it still had a strange feeling of safety for him. Shame he couldn’t stay here forever.

‘Not really,’ he said.

‘What happened?’

‘Well, my parents stepped up the passive-aggression, so it was more like actual aggression. They’d turned my old bedroom into a guest room and moved all my stuff into the box room, overlooking a brick wall and the bins. Then they spent the whole time telling me I needed to get a proper job and why didn’t I go back to finish my degree-’

Ciri rolled her eyes.

‘-like that’d help much, when I don’t even want to go into catering anyway. The only reason I studied catering in the first place was because I thought I’d get to eat some good food and I liked the look of the Derbyshire Dome and Buxton was a long way from Bloomsbury. The only good thing that came out of my degree was meeting you and Essi.’

Ciri nodded and ate some more of her sandwich, cautiously.

‘Plus Buxton is pretty I guess,’ said Jaskier.

‘I guess so,’ said Ciri, with one of her shrugs, like she’d never really thought about it before. When your grandmother is the Dowager Duchess of Derbyshire, your family is so rich their old stable block is a huge dome dominating an entire town in the Peak District, and their family home is used as a filming location to stand in for Pemberley and Buckingham Palace, you probably have different standards for these things.

‘And they said that, unless I bucked my ideas up, I wasn’t getting any kind of birthday present this year, and I certainly wasn’t allowed to go to their stupid New Year party - they made me stay in my room! The box room that is. I’m twenty-five years old now, and I had to stay in my room on New Year’s Eve like a naughty teenager.’

Ciri just finished the first half of her sandwich and licked the grease off her fingertips.

‘Then they said that, if I thought I could keep staying with them rent-free, I had another thing coming. They basically kicked me out! So I’m probably going to have to sleep in my van tonight, unless you have any better ideas.’

‘Well you can’t afford the Dorchester, and Grandma will never let you stay at Cintra,’ said Ciri.

‘Yeah, I know, nobody wants me,’ said Jaskier, and drained the bitter dregs of his cappuccino.

‘What happened to your house in Derby?’ Ciri asked him. ‘I know it had damp, but it was better than sleeping in the back of an ancient Transit van.’

‘Yeah, about that…’ Jaskier shifted his eyes away from her face.

‘What about that, Jas? What did you do now?’

‘I might have - sort of - maybe - slept with the landlord’s wife.’

‘You did what?!’

‘I slept with the landlord’s wife, and he threw me out! Said I’d seduced her, which sounds like something from the middle ages, and besides, she was the one who seduced me. And boy, she had a lot of energy to spare, talk about keeping up all night-’

‘Stop right there,’ said Ciri, and made a disgusted noise in her throat.

‘Ok, ok, so I screwed up there. And my rent was already paid for the next month, and I’m not getting my deposit back, and my parents have basically chucked me out, so I don’t know what to do. And Essi is still up in Edinburgh, so I can’t ask her, so - do you have any ideas?’

His voice had taken on a pathetic whining quality that sounded annoying even to his own ears, but he was desperate, and she was supposed to be his friend as well as just his band-mate, and she was filthy fucking rich besides. Surely she could do something for him?

Ciri sat back and sipped her tea, watching him over the rim of her cup with cool green eyes. She enjoyed making him wait. There was a reason her nickname was ‘The Devil.’

‘I have one idea,’ she said at last, ‘but I don’t think you’ll like it very much.’

‘Let me hear it anyway.’

‘Have I ever mentioned my uncle Geralt?’

‘The soldier guy?’

‘Not a soldier. A Witcher. The Special Magic Service gets very tetchy if you call them soldiers. They’re worse than the Marines that way.’

‘Whatever,’ said Jaskier. Despite growing up almost in the shadow of Aretuza House, he knew basically nothing about the secretive world of magic. He didn’t know anything about the special forces either, and as for the Special Magic Service - beyond some vague idea that they fought insurgencies and terrorism in far-off places - he knew nothing at all.

‘Anyway, he’s not a Witcher any more. He had to retire when he got injured, and he took over his family’s old sheep farm.’

‘His family’s old sheep farm? Is that what you’re calling Cintra now?’

‘No,’ said Ciri, with a trace of irritation. ‘He’s my uncle on my father’s side. Long line of uplands farmers. My other grandmother died with a newborn lamb in her hands. Grandma - Duchess Grandma - tried to offer him a job as a groundsman but he wasn’t having any of it. Had to work his own land, he said. His farm’s in the moors above Edale, near Kinder Scout.’

‘Kinder Scout? Where you made me go walking that time on the Pennine Way, and I fell in a peat bog and nearly died and ended up as a bog mummy?’

‘You didn’t nearly die, you just got cold and wet and moaned about it all the way back to Buxton.’

‘So, this guy lives near where I nearly died, and you’re not suggesting…?’

‘That he needs some help on his sheep farm so you could live with him rent-free in exchange for doing some heavy lifting.’

‘Me? Doing heavy lifting? On a sheep farm? In the most Godforsaken part of the Dark Peak?’

‘Is it any worse than sleeping in your van?’

Jaskier thought about that, and couldn’t make up his mind.

‘Look, he’s my uncle, yeah he’s kind of grumpy but he’s a good bloke really, and I don’t like to think about on his own, especially with his injury. You’d be doing me a favour if you went and helped him out, and he can give you somewhere to live while you get back on your feet again. How hard can the work be? You probably just need to yeet a sheep or two into the dip once a year or something. And living in rural Derbyshire will be good for you, you’ll probably wander over the moors with your lute and write some songs.’

‘Oh, you think?’ said Jaskier.

‘I think you don’t have many other options,’ said Ciri. ‘I’ll text uncle Geralt now, and send you his address. If you get going straight away, you can even avoid getting a ticket from that parking warden who’s coming up the street.’

‘What? Shit!’ Jaskier looked over his shoulder to see that there was indeed a parking warden walking slowly but steadily up the street outside. He had - at a rough calculation - less than a minute before he got a ticket slapped on the window of his van. He hastily pulled on his coat, grabbed his lute and rucksack, and made a clumsy dash for the door.

Ciri just sat there, sipping her tea.

‘Bye, Jas,’ she said at his back. ‘See you in Derbyshire.’

***

Jaskier reached the van just in time, clambered inside - pausing only to lay his lute carefully in the passenger seat and fasten the seatbelt around it - and then drove off without fastening his own seat belt. He drove slowly around Russell Square, toying with the idea of heading back to his parents’ house and begging them to let him stay for a bit longer, maybe feeding them some fibs about getting a job as a sous chef or a receptionist or doing a course in accountancy or something. Then his phone pinged twice in rapid succession with two messages from Ciri, the first one sending him a postcode to somewhere in deepest darkest Derbyshire, and the second one saying ‘I’ve told Uncle Geralt you’re on your way! Remember to put your seatbelt on! I don’t want to tell him his new shepherd has just died in a pileup on the M1 before he could even reach the farm.’

And he thought, ‘Fuck it’, fumbled his seatbelt into place, and headed off towards Regent’s Park. And beyond that, the M1, the great artery that led northwards from London.

The van was old and scuffed and probably worth less than the petrol in the tank, but it was big enough to hold the three of them - him, and Ciri, and Essi - in the front, and all their instruments and equipment in the back, and yes you could even sleep in it if you really had to. It was decorated with some fairly amateurish paintwork of their band name - The Dandelion, the Devil, and the Little Eye. A very long name for a very un-famous folk band, but they hadn’t been able to think of anything more concise, and it suited them. He was the Dandelion - based on a (loose) translation of the Polish name his mother had given him, and the fact that Ciri said he had a talent for turning up where he wasn’t wanted. She was the Devil, because she said things like that, and drank Earl Grey tea (with milk in!) at breakfast-time. And she played the drums like, well, the Devil. If the Devil played drums in a folk band. And Essi was Little Eye, because her stupid vintage hairstyle hid one of her eyes most of the time. She claimed it was ‘the Veronica Lake look’ and it was probably very fashionable in 1942. Jaskier and Ciri put up with her eccentricities because she was completely mesmerising on the stage. She could sing, and play the hurdy-gurdy, and the violin, and the bagpipes, and a bunch of other instruments to boot, and everyone loved her.

Jaskier turned the radio on and twiddled the dial - the van was so old it didn’t even have a CD player, let alone anywhere to plug in his phone. He cycled through several stations before settling on one playing oldies, which was the least offensive option on offer. The roads were reasonably quiet, and soon he settled into the not-unpleasant semi-trance that overtook him on long journeys without anyone to talk to, disrupted only by the need to re-tune the radio every so often as it lost the signal of successive stations. He stopped at Leicester Forest East service station for a cup of bad coffee and an indifferent hummus-and-roasted-pepper vegan wrap, and treated himself to a bag of fruit sherbet sweets for the second half of the journey. Every time he drove between Derbyshire and London, it seemed to take longer and get more tedious.

He steadily sucked his way through the sweets as he got further and further North up the M1, left the motorway, drove through Chesterfield, and then finally reached the Peak District. He drove along the twisting road through the high moorland country, the hillsides covered in brown dead heather and bracken, criss-crossed by dry stone walls, and dusted lightly with snow. The winter landscape had a certain stark beauty - the kind of beauty best enjoyed from inside a nice warm house with a cup of something hot in hand.

By the time he reached the village of Hope, the light was already starting to fail, and he had to put the van’s headlights on to drive the last stretch up the narrow one-track country lanes (and yes, he appreciated that he was literally leaving Hope behind). Finally, he reached his destination: an old farmhouse perched on the hillside, made of the dark grey-brown gritstone that gave the Dark Peak its name. It looked almost like a natural feature of the landscape - like one of the gritstone escarpments and boulders that jutted out of the ground and were crawling with rock climbers every weekend - and it was surrounded by a jumble of outbuildings. A small sign on the gatepost said ‘Rivia Farm.’ There were no lights on in the house, and the only sign of life anywhere was a horse in a stable on the far side of the front yard, nearly invisible in the gathering gloom but for the white stripe down its nose.

Jaskier parked his van out front on the muddy and pot-holed farmyard, between an ancient Land Rover and an even more ancient tractor, and checked his phone to be sure he was at the right place.

Of course, there was no signal.

Although he saw that he’d received a message from Ciri an hour or so ago which he hadn’t noticed up to now. It read: ‘Oh btw if Geralt isn’t at the house he’s probably in one of the upper fields with the sheep. Good luck!’ And then a series of emojis including but not limited to the blowing-a-kiss-face and the laughing-while-crying-face. Also several sheep.

‘Right then, Jas,’ he said to himself, ‘all you need to do is get out of the van and go up to one of these upper fields. Easy.’

He got out of the van, and was immediately blasted with cold air. He considered just climbing into the back of the van, and curling into the foetal position. Then he considered driving all the way back to London. Then he grabbed his coat, and resolved to at least spend five minutes trying to find his new employer/landlord/uncle-by-association before giving up altogether.

Jaskier spent a few minutes bundling himself up as much as possible against the biting cold, and then tried to work out which way he was supposed to go. In one direction there was the stable and a looming dark barn; he was nervous of horses and didn’t like the look of the barn either, so he went the other way. This led him down the side of the house, past a woodshed, an oil tank and a septic tank. All the most attractive parts of a homestead.

The back of the house, in contrast to the front, had a surprisingly neat garden: there was a lawn, a large and well-tended vegetable patch, a small pond and rockery, and a patio complete with a wooden table and chairs and a rather incongruous hot tub. There was also a wide-open view - previously hidden by the house itself - over the rolling moorland and the valley of Edale below, the setting sun lighting up the high patches of rock and heather while elsewhere the shadows gathered. And as he wandered, Jaskier saw that, to the left of the house where the ground sloped upwards, there was a rough farm track across the fields. This must surely lead to the upper fields, he reasoned, and, feeling clever with himself, he set off.

***

If there was good thing Jaskier could say about walking uphill on a cold winter’s day at dusk in the Dark Peak, it was that the exercise kept him warm. Other than that, he wouldn’t recommend the experience: the track was rough and deeply rutted, the ground half-frozen and studded with rocks so that his feet kept on slipping and tripping into muddy patches, and more than once he fell right over and scratched his hands on the dead bracken.

At least he felt fairly sure he was going the right way - he could soon hear the bleating of sheep, the growl of some kind of machinery, and the occasional bark of a dog. Eventually he reached the top of a rise, crested with a dry stone wall, climbed onto a stile, and then he had a view over a dip in the landscape, just below. The scene in the dip was half a perfect image of timeless rural England. A small flock of sheep were being herded into a half-broken-down stone shelter by a black-and-white dog. And there was the shepherd too, although he wasn’t standing by with a crook - he was riding, somewhat incongruously, on a quad bike. That was what was making the growling sound. The quad bike was pulling a small trailer, filled with hay, and Jaskier watched as the farmer - who was, presumably, Geralt - stopped the bike, got off it, and started heaving hay into a feeding trough with a pitchfork. He moved with a stiffness in his left leg which suggested an old injury, and Jaskier remembered what Ciri had said about her uncle having to retire from Witching (Witchering? Who knew?)

After watching him for a few moments, it suddenly occurred to Jaskier that perhaps he should offer to help out.

‘Hey!’ he called from the stile, then clambered awkwardly down - almost falling flat on his face in the process - and starting walking over to the farmer. The dog barked at him a couple of times, then quieted at a word from its master.

As Jaskier approached, he saw that - injury aside Geralt appeared to be a typical Peak District farmer, wearing a shapeless mud-coloured coat, green wellies, and flat cap. The only thing about him that was at all different from usual was his hair, which was long and white, streaming down his back from beneath his cap. He was tall and bulky - he’d probably got fat after retiring from the special forces.

‘Hey,’ he called back. His voice was deep, and gruff. ‘You must be Jaskier.’ He pronounced it jazz-keer, which always made Jaskier wince a little bit.

‘Actually, it’s pronounced yass-kier,’ he said. ‘It’s Polish.’

‘Hmm,’ said Geralt. ‘I’m Geralt, with a hard ‘G’. Not Gerald. And certainly not Gerry. I guess we both hate that ‘J’ sound.’

His tone was so flat it took Jaskier a moment to realise that he’d just made a joke. Of sorts. He chuckled, awkwardly. He seemed to be doing everything awkwardly.

‘Well, I suppose we’ve got something in common,’ he said.

‘Hmm,’ said Geralt. ‘This is Flower.’

It took Jaskier another moment to realise he was referring to the dog. ‘Oh right,’ he said, unsure how he was supposed to respond. ‘Strange name for a sheepdog,’ he said at last. ‘I’d have thought Rex or Rover or-’

‘That’s her name. She’s a border collie. Now, are you going to stand around all day, or are you going to help me feed the sheep?’

‘Oh, sure, I’ll help, said Jaskier. ‘What do you need me to do?’

In response, Geralt threw the pitchfork at him. Jaskier yelped in alarm, ducked, realised he was supposed to catch it, fumbled to pick it up from the ground - it was a lot heavier than he’d expected - and then nearly tripped himself up when the handle swung into his legs.

‘Keep piling in the hay,’ said Geralt. ‘I’ll deal with the water trough.’ He stumped off, leaving Jaskier to the task of hauling the hay. It was a lot harder than Geralt had made it look, especially as the sheep kept crowding round him, nearly knocking him to the ground. Flower was no help at herding them out of the way - she just sat there staring, and Jaskier imagined she was laughing at him, if a dog could laugh.

By the time all the remaining hay had been transferred from the trailer to the feeding trough - with quite a lot of it ending up on the ground - Jaskier’s arms were aching and shaking with the effort. Farming was hard work, he decided. Then he looked down at his clothes, and saw that he was splattered with mud (and probably a fair amount of sheep dung) from head to foot, and his shoes were probably ruined forever.

‘Oh, shit,’ he said.

‘You need better clothes,’ said Geralt, as he limped over. Up close, Jaskier saw that he was much younger than the white hair had led him to expect - forty at most - with a strong jaw and a slightly cleft chin. And his eyes - his eyes were not a normal colour. They were a sort of - orange? Eyes were not supposed to be orange. In the rapidly fading daylight, they almost seemed to glow, like a cat’s. They were not natural, those eyes.

 _Don’t stare, Jaskier_ , he told himself. _It must be a Witcher thing._

‘These are good clothes,’ said Jaskier. ‘Or they were. I paid a lot of money for them!’ Too much money for a catering-school dropout and struggling folk musician, truth be told, but Jaskier had always liked to look good.

‘Not for sheep farming, they’re not,’ said Geralt, and Jaskier couldn’t really argue with that. ‘I’ll dig out some of my old clothes and wellies for you.’

Jaskier was just about to complain about the idea of having to wear someone else’s too-big worn-out castoff clothes when it occurred to him that, if he was going to get coated in mud, perhaps it would be better to be wearing someone else’s clothes.

‘Thanks,’ he said.

‘Now, we’re done here,’ said Geralt. His voice, Jaskier realised, wasn’t quite what he’d expected - he had only the barest trace of a Derbyshire accent. He guessed Witchers didn’t spend much time in Derbyshire - there was more call for their services elsewhere. Not that he really knew anything about what Witchers actually did, other than that it was secretive and dangerous.

‘You want to stand there day-dreaming in the dark, or you want come back to the house and get cleaned up?’ Geralt asked him.

‘Oh, I, er, sure, yeah - I want to go back to the house,’ said Jaskier.

Geralt walked over to the quad bike and climbed onto the… seat? Saddle? Jaskier had no idea how these things worked. His injured leg made the movement look stiff and awkward, although he seemed well-practised.

‘You can ride on the back if you want,’ he said.

There wasn’t really a seat there, just a sort of… rack? Jaskier wasn’t entirely sure it would even bear his weight, but he was tired and cold and didn’t really fancy walking back down the rough track, so he climbed onto it and hung on with both hands. Geralt fired up the engine, flicked on the lights, and they set off, bumping along the track at what was probably only about 5mph but felt much faster, with Flower running along behind. It was a hair-raising, bone-shaking journey, broken by a couple of moments when Jaskier had to dismount on shaking legs to open and close gates, and Jaskier was only glad it was over quickly.

When they got to the house, there was a flurry of activity while Geralt parked the quad bike in a shed, helped Jaskier get his stuff in from the van, and showed him where his bedroom and the bathroom were. The farmhouse’s furnishings and decorations were all old and scuffed, but clean and originally good quality. The bathroom had an old-fashioned clawfoot bath with a shower attached to the taps, and a high-cistern toilet. His bedroom had a brass bedstead and an old mahogany wardrobe and chest-of drawers.

Although it was only mid-afternoon when he’d arrived here, by the time Jaskier had put all his possessions in his new room, had a shower, put on new clothes, and gone downstairs to the kitchen, he was already feeling exhausted. And hungry. Something smelled delicious.

The kitchen was dominated by a blue Aga and a big oak table that looked like it had been there for hundreds of years (and possibly had). Geralt was there, wearing a grey woolly jumper as shapeless as the coat he’d had on before, and Flower was lying in a dog bed next to the Aga.

‘Do you like Lancashire hotpot?’ Geralt asked, as he pulled a casserole dish from the depths of the oven.

‘Sure,’ said Jaskier, although he felt a bit weird eating lamb after so soon after feeding sheep. Well, it was the circle of life or something. Part of his brain reminded him that he was supposed to be doing Veganuary, but he was so hungry, and it smelled so good…

Geralt put the hotpot down on a trivet in the middle of the table and spent a second rummaging in a drawer. Jaskier assumed he was finding a serving spoon, but when he turned around, he had a small candle and a box of matches.

‘Ciri told me it’s your birthday today,’ he said. ‘I don’t have any cake or anything, but I’ve got a candle.’

He jabbed the candle into the sliced-potato topping of the hotpot and lit it. Jaskier let it burn for a few moments, feeling overcome with emotions of various kinds. He’d actually forgotten it was his birthday until now, and now - he had a single candle stuck in a Lancashire hotpot as his celebration. It was probably the most pathetic birthday anyone had ever had, ever. And yet - Geralt was trying to be kind to him. He was sitting in a warm kitchen, in a home that might not be his own but was at least a home, and he had a hot meal in front of him and a warm bed to look forward to later. He was two hundred miles away from his parents. Life could be much better, but it could be a whole lot worse.

‘You can make a wish, if you want,’ said Geralt. ‘Just be careful what you wish for. They’re tricky things, wishes. And don’t tell me what it is.’

‘All right,’ said Jaskier, feeling oddly solemn. He sucked in his breath, blew out the candle in one go, and made a silent wish.

***

Jaskier went to bed that night earlier than he’d ever gone to bed before, completely worn out by his long journey followed by hard work in the field and then a big dinner. He slept soundly and, when he opened his eyes the next morning, there was a long moment when he was completely confused to see the large and simply furnished bedroom that surrounded him, instead of his parents’ box room. Then he remembered. Of course. He wasn’t in London any more - he was in darkest Derbyshire, staying with a sheep farmer.

He rolled out of the bed, went over to the window, and drew the magnolia-patterned curtains. He was greeted by a starkly beautiful view of fields, hillside, and cloudy dawn sky, with no houses or any other sign of human activity visible. Except…

In a paddock near the house, Geralt was riding around on a bay horse with a white nose - the same horse, Jaskier thought, he had caught a glimpse of the day before when he first arrived. He knew next to nothing about horses or riding, but Geralt certainly looked very assured in the saddle, the ungainly movement of his injured leg completely undetectable. Jaskier watched for a few minutes, before a tug of hunger in his stomach prompted him to go downstairs and try to find some breakfast.

When he walked out of the bedroom, he found something waiting for him on the landing - a pile of clothes, and a pair of green wellies. For a moment he thought Geralt had just left his laundry lying around, and then he remembered - he’d promised to dig out some of his old clothes for Jaskier to wear. He took it all back into his bedroom and inspected his ‘new’ outfits - all of it obviously old and worn and patched and mended, and smelling faintly like woodsmoke and horses. It seemed - serviceable. Everything was too big for him, but he could roll back the sleeves, wear the several pairs of thick woolly socks Geralt had provided, and stuff the too-long trousers into the top of the wellies.

He went downstairs wearing a long-sleeved England rugby shirt, a blue cable-knit jumper with holes in the elbows, a pair of tweed trousers, and the wellies, which made him walk clumsily but with any luck would keep his feet dry. In the kitchen he found a cafetière half-full of coffee on the top of the Aga, together with a saucepan half-full of porridge. Nearby was a glass jar, hand-labelled ‘Mixed Berry Jam.’ Immensely glad that he didn’t have to try to rummage through the cupboards in search of food, he helped himself and sat down at the table to eat. Laid across the table was a newspaper from several days ago, opened at the crossword puzzle. Did people still buy newspapers and do crossword puzzles? Apparently so, as several of the clues were already filled in. Jaskier supposed there wasn’t much else to do for fun, out here in the middle of nowhere. He picked up the biro which had been left lying nearby, and amused himself while he ate by trying to figure out a few more. It wasn’t easy - what on earth was ‘College ball: ten pounds (7),’ or ‘gseg (4) supposed to be? He turned to the Sudoku instead - that was a bit less brain-scrambling this early in the morning.

Some time passed, without Geralt appearing, and Jaskier started to wonder if he should go outside and start looking for him. Was he still riding? What time did sheep farmers start work anyway? Probably far earlier than Jaskier normally woke up. Once he’d finished the Sudoku, finished the rest of the coffee in the pot, and washed up his breakfast things, he realised he didn’t have much else to do. He supposed he could always do some lute practice - but that would definitely feel like he was taking the piss. Lingering over breakfast was one thing, playing the lute when he was supposed to working was quite another.

And so he hauled on his coat - well, Geralt’s old coat from the pile he’d left upstairs - and headed outside into the garden, bracing himself for another long trudge up the hillside in search of the shepherd and doubtless another disagreeable task.

To his surprise, he not only found Geralt immediately, but he wasn’t even working - he was on the patio, soaking in the hot tub. Leaning back, eyes half-closed, his right arm dangling over the side of the tub.

‘Oh,’ said Jaskier, half to himself, unsure what he was supposed to do. Geralt didn’t seem to have realised he was there. Jaskier shuffled slightly closer, and noticed two things about that dangling arm. One was that he had a striking tattoo on his shoulder - a stylised line drawing of a snarling white wolf, in profile. And the other was that, contrary to what Jaskier had been thinking up to now, he apparently didn’t have an ounce of fat on him. The bulk was entirely muscle. 100% muscle. His bicep - good lord, it was practically the size of a watermelon, even when not flexed.

 _‘Oh,’_ said Jaskier.

‘Hmm,’ said Geralt.

‘Oh, I, er - I’ve had some breakfast,’ said Jaskier. ‘Thanks for leaving me some porridge, and the coffee… and I was just coming out into the garden, to see if I could find you, and now - here you are.’

‘Here I am.’

Silence. Geralt leaned back a little bit more in the tub, and closed his eyes altogether. At least one of them was relaxed.

‘So, um, do you usually soak in the hot tub in the morning?’ asked Jaskier. ‘It’s - uh - not what I’d have expected.’

‘I go riding on Roach every morning, and then I sit in the hot tub,’ said Geralt. ‘It’s part of my rehabilitation. Recommended by my thaumo-physiotherapist.’

Jaskier didn’t know what one of those was, and he didn’t like to ask.

‘Ah, ok,’ he said. ‘Can I do - anything to help?’

Geralt raised his eyebrows. ‘I don’t need any assistance with scrubbing those hard-to-reach places, thank you,’ he said, and if Jaskier hadn’t been red in the face before, he was now. ‘If you want to make yourself useful, you could go to the vegetable patch and dig up a few potatoes. The fork is in that shed over there.’ He lifted his arm - his obscenely muscular arm - and pointed.

‘Rightey-oh. I can do that. Definitely within my realm of capability.’

_Shut up, Jaskier, and dig the potatoes._

He found the garden fork in the shed Geralt had indicated, and walked over to the vegetable patch he had spotted yesterday. Digging up potatoes from the frozen-hard ground was hard work, and he soon had to take pause to rub his forehead. He glanced up and saw Geralt, still lounging in the hot tub. Beyond him was the house, looking much as it had done yesterday when he’d first arrived.

Except, he hadn’t looked at it properly from this angle before, and - what were those dormer windows? His memory of the house’s interior layout didn’t seem to match with what he was looking at. It was a simple enough floor plan - an entrance hall in the centre, a cloakroom tucked under the turn of the staircase, the kitchen to the right, the living room to the left, then upstairs there was Geralt’s bedroom and the bathroom over the living room, and the other bedroom - Jaskier’s bedroom - over the kitchen. There was no staircase leading up to the attic level - or was there? Jaskier remembered there was a door on the landing which he’d assumed was simply a linen cupboard - but perhaps it actually opened onto a staircase up to another floor. A whole other floor of the house, which he’d had no idea was there.

‘What’s in the attic?’ he asked Geralt, as he walked back to the patio with his haul of potatoes, held in a makeshift basket formed by lifting up the front of his jumper, like a Victorian maiden out picking berries and storing them in her pinafore. He didn’t get too close to the hot tub - he didn’t know if Geralt was wearing anything beneath the surface of the water, and he didn’t want to find out.

‘Nothing,’ said Geralt. ‘Just some old junk. None of your business.’

‘Oh right,’ said Jaskier, feeling strangely disappointed. ‘So, er, what do you want me to do with these potatoes?’

‘You could try taking them into the kitchen. Then you could try scrubbing and peeling them.’

‘Right. I’ll do that then.’

‘Hmm,’ said Geralt.

***

Jaskier found that it didn’t take long to get used to life on the farm - the days spent in physical work, the evenings spent in the living room with the log-burning stove going, watching television, or reading one of the many books from the shelf which lined one wall - most of them old paperbacks with stories of fantasy and adventure. Geralt always went to bed early and Jaskier spent the time late in the evening practising his lute - quietly, and in the kitchen so as not to disturb him. Flower was usually dozing in her bed next to the Aga, and didn’t seem to mind the music.

Geralt didn’t really speak to him more than strictly necessary, but they seemed to get along well enough - well enough to get the work done, and sit in near-silence in the evenings, on separate sofas, warmed by the same fire. Apart from a couple of trips out to get whatever supplies could not be provided from the pantry or the vegetable garden, they barely left the farm.

January wasn’t really a big month for music. Their first gig of the year was on Burns Night, at The Exeter Arms pub in Derby, and Jaskier had his first expedition in the van since arriving in Derbyshire. He drove into Buxton, collected Ciri and her drum kit from her house on the outskirts of town (a house owned by the Derbyshire estate, obviously), then collected Essi and her bagpipes from her studio flat in an old mill on the northern edge of Derby, before finally driving into the centre of town and parking near the river.

It wasn’t a large pub, and they were crammed into a stage in the corner. After getting set up, they ate a hasty dinner provided by the pub as part of their paltry payment - haggis neeps and tatties of course, and a wee dram.

‘I can’t believe I’m spending Burns Night in a pub in Derby with a bunch of sassenachs,’ Essi complained, playing up her Scottish accent more than usual. She had somehow managed to find a skirt which was covered with sequins in a pattern of the Black Watch tartan, and had paired it with a T-shirt with a St Andrew’s cross emblazoned across the front. Just in case anyone was in any doubt. The only thing she didn’t have was a tam o’shanter. It would probably have mucked up her hairstyle.

‘This haggis is bland,’ she added, ‘and this so-called whisky is barely deserving of the name Scotch.’

‘You know you could have stayed in Edinburgh,’ said Ciri, sweetly. ‘If you hate it so much here.’

Essi drained her glass of inferior whisky, and changed the subject. ‘So how’s the sheep farm working out?’ she asked.

‘Yeah, how is it?’ asked Ciri. ‘You and Uncle Geralt managing ok?

Jaskier shrugged. ‘All right, I guess,’ he said. ‘He doesn’t say much.’

‘No, he never was much of a talker, and he says even less since he came back from Afgh- from when he got his injury,’ said Ciri. ‘But he hasn’t thrown you out yet, so that’s a success. Seems he likes you more than your parents do.’

‘Ouch,’ said Jaskier. ‘Low blow.’

‘Sorry,’ said Ciri, with a smile that suggested she was anything but. ‘He coming tonight?’

‘Don’t think so,’ said Jaskier. ‘I told him about the gig, and he just said “hmm”.’

‘That sounds like Uncle Geralt.’

‘Well, if you’ve finished fuelling up on neeps, I think we should get ready to play,’ said Essi.

It was a strange gig, with Essi reciting Scots poetry in between the songs, and alternating between singing and playing the bagpipes. She insisted on including ‘Scotland the Brave’ on the set list. Ciri just kept banging her drums at the back, and Jaskier felt that his lute didn’t really go that well with the theme of the evening - but the pub’s customers seemed to lap it all up, getting increasingly drunk on good beer and mediocre whisky.

Part way through, when they took a break, Jaskier made his way to the men’s room - and saw someone, tucked into a corner by himself. Geralt had made the trip after all. Jaskier tried to go and say hi to him, but he couldn’t easily get past the press of people around the bar. He tried waving instead - and Geralt raised a slow hand to him.

Later, after last orders had been and gone, they’d played Auld Lang Syne and everyone in the pub had joined in while they finished their drinks, Jaskier walked over to that table in the corner - and found it empty.

Geralt had gone home already.

Jaskier supposed he’d just wanted to get back to the farm and get to bed, ready for another early start. Still, he couldn’t help feeling - weirdly bereft, like he’d missed out on something, but he wasn’t even sure what it was.

On the long drive back to Edale, via Buxton, he asked Ciri and Essi if they’d spoken to Geralt.

‘That’s odd,’ said Ciri. ‘I hadn’t even noticed he was there.’


	2. February

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaskier and his band-mates discuss their fortunes over brunch, and Geralt has a couple of encounters.

Early in February, they had a brunch-time band meeting at a cafe in the heart of Derby, within spitting distance of the Cathedral’s fifteenth-century tower. The Bear had great coffee, and big tables so they could spread out their calendars and notebooks, and on a weekday morning it was quiet so the staff didn’t mind them taking up one of the biggest tables for a couple of hours for the price of an Eggs Benedict and a couple of cappuccinos each. It was also only a few minutes’ walk away from Essi’s flat, and she was not a morning person, so the less they asked her to do before noon, the better.

Jaskier, however, found that he was now so used to keeping early hours on the sheep farm that a drive into Derby in time for brunch seemed like nothing more than a welcome change of scene. Plus he got to sit inside a cafe drinking hot coffee on a cold blustery day, instead of being out on a hillside hauling hay.

‘Right,’ said Essi, pointing at February on her calendar. ‘Coming up next, we’ve got the Derby Winter Beer Festival.’

‘Try not to drink so much of the free beer as last year,’ said Ciri. ‘I’m surprised they invited us back this year, frankly.’

‘Hey, I sing better after I’ve had a few,’ said Essi. ‘And I didn’t drink as much as Jaskier.’

‘He can hold his drink better than you,’ said Ciri.

‘No he can’t, he just sounds like he’s drunk anyway.’

‘Hey!’ said Jaskier.

Both of them turned to glare at him, as if he was spoiling their fun.

‘So then after that,’ Essi continued, ‘it’s the Green Man at Shrovetide. Do we have to do this? That fucking football game is just an excuse for a riot, with us in the middle of it. Last year I nearly got chucked in the river.’

‘They pay well,’ said Jaskier.

‘Grandma says the Ashbourne Shrovetide Football game is one of Derbyshire’s oldest and most cherished traditions,’ said Ciri, as if that settled the matter, forever. Essi just made a grumbling noise.

‘We need more pub gigs,’ said Jaskier. ‘More arts centres. That kind of bread-and-butter stuff. We’ve got all these folk festivals lined up, but it’s not enough just to be playing at a festival once a month, especially if everyone’s really there to get pissed.’

‘I’ll call the Flowerpot again,’ said Essi.

‘I’ll ask Grandma,’ said Ciri.

‘We need a better website,’ said Jaskier. ‘And a band manager or something.’

‘Like we make enough money to pay a bloody manager,’ said Essi.

‘Did you ask Uncle Geralt if he knows anyone who could get us a gig or two?’ Ciri asked Jaskier.

‘Who would he even know?’ he shot back. ‘He never goes anywhere. Well, hardly ever. Besides, he’s your uncle - you ask him.’

‘You’re the one living in his house, you see him every day, traipsing over the hillsides looking for lost lambs or whatever it is you do.’

‘There aren’t any lost lambs at this time of year,’ said Jaskier. ‘Don’t you know anything about sheep farming?’

‘No.’

‘Well I do, now. I’ve spent the last week helping your Uncle Geralt give ultrasound scans to pregnant ewes, so we can give extra food to any of them that are expecting twins. I didn’t even know sheep could have ultrasound scans, but it turns out they can. And doling out extra portions of hay is my life now, apparently. Except for when I’m playing gigs, which we need more of, so let’s focus some more on that, shall we?’

‘That’s what I’m trying to do! And if you don’t like living with Geralt, you don’t have to stay with him, you know.’

Jaskier sighed. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘He’s - fine. It’s fine. I don’t mind the work, really. It’s somewhere to live. He’s not difficult to live with - not compared with my parents, anyway.’

‘That’s a ringing endorsement,’ said Essi. ‘Now, shall we try making a list of all the pubs and other venues we can think of which might hire us to play there, and then we can divvy it up and start making some phone calls in our own time?’

‘I hate talking on the phone,’ said Jaskier.

‘Me too,’ said Ciri.

‘Emails, whatever,’ said Essi. ‘I can’t believe I’m being the sensible one here.’

‘Neither can I,’ muttered Jaskier, and grabbed hold of his pen to start making a list. At the top he wrote: ‘Ask Geralt if he knows any places ???’

Jaskier got back to the farm in the early afternoon, expecting Geralt to be up in the fields. Instead, when he pushed open the front door, he heard a deep moaning sound coming from the living room - unmistakably Geralt, although it wasn’t anything like any sound he’d heard from him before. Jaskier felt the back of his neck prickle - was Geralt in pain? Or - was that a noise of pleasure?

Then he heard something else - a woman’s voice. ‘How does that feel?’ she was asking.

‘Better - oh, much better,’ said Geralt, and Jaskier immediately felt his face flush with blood. Geralt was - he had - there was a woman in the house! And she was - _pleasuring_ \- him somehow. That was - embarrassing. He should probably sneak upstairs, pretend he hadn’t heard anything, or maybe he should sneak back out to the van, and drive away, and never come back here ever again…

He took one step forwards, towards the stairs, then changed his mind, and pivoted, and then changed his mind again, and got as far as the bottom step, which creaked loudly under his foot.

_Shit._

‘What was that?’ asked the woman. Jaskier froze.

‘Oh, it’ll just be Jaskier, coming home,’ said Geralt. ‘My lodger.’

‘You didn’t say you had a lodger,’

‘You didn’t ask. Anyway, does it matter?’

‘I think it’ll do you good to have someone else around the house,’ said the woman. ‘Stop you getting too weird, out here on your own all the time.’

‘Hmm,’ said Geralt.

‘Why don’t you ask him in here to say hi?’

 _Oh no, I don’t want to say hi to anyone_ , thought Jaskier, although he was completely unable to move from the spot, one foot still on the step, the other on the tiled floor of the hallway.

‘Fine,’ said Geralt, and then raised his voice. ‘Jaskier! Stop eavesdropping and come in here. You can make us some tea as well if you’re not doing anything better with yourself.’

‘Sure, fine, I’m coming in,’ said Jaskier, and walked slowly into the living room, braced for nudity.

There was nudity - although not quite in the way he’d expected. Geralt was naked except for a towel draped over his middle, and he was lying face-down on a portable treatment table that had been set up in the middle of the room. The woman, however, was fully dressed, in a long green-and-gold gown. She had a head of dark curls and there was something about her -

_She’s a Sorceress._

Jaskier had no idea where that thought had come from, and yet there it was.

She was standing over Geralt, and seemed to be doing something to his legs - some kind of magical massage or physiotherapy, probably. Probably not a sex thing after all. Jaskier felt a lot more relieved at that thought than he’d expected. Then he noticed the scars. There were a lot of them, standing out stark white against Geralt’s skin. The ones on his back looked mostly like knife wounds, but the ones on his leg - they looked like… bite marks. Ragged, gouging bite marks, where whole chunks of his flesh had apparently been ripped out. He must have been savagely attacked by - something. Jaskier couldn’t help wincing at the sight of them.

‘Jaskier, this is Triss Merigold,’ said Geralt. ‘She comes here every six weeks to help with my healing.’

‘I come _here_ all the way from London,’ said Triss. ‘Just to tend to him. Perks of being a Witcher.’

‘Retired Witcher,’ said Geralt.

‘Once a Witcher, always a Witcher,’ said Triss, and dug her fingers into his leg in a way which was apparently supposed to be healing but also made him wince a little, and hiss his breath between his teeth. Jaskier winced again in sympathy.

‘And what do you do, Jaskier?’ Triss asked him.

‘I’m an, er, musician,’ he answered.

‘What do you play?’

‘The lute. And I, er, sing, too. Folk stuff. Modern folk. We’re very, um, forward-thinking. Not just a load of twanging in the corner of the pub.’

_Why was he stumbling over his words so much? Why couldn’t he tear his eyes away from Geralt’s body, so muscular and so scarred, the power and the pain both obvious as he was laid out on the table?_

‘Is that right?’ Triss asked. ‘What sort of places do you play?’

‘Oh, you know, folk festivals, beer festivals…’ Jaskier realised belatedly that he should take this opportunity to ask the question his bandmates had agreed earlier on. ‘That, er, reminds me - Geralt, do you know of any places around here where we could get more gigs? Any pubs? Or whatever?’

_Perhaps he should have asked this question later, when Triss had gone, and Geralt was less… naked._

‘Hmm,’ said Geralt. ‘I suppose you could try the Three Stags’ Heads.’

‘Thanks,’ said Jaskier, and then remembered something else. ‘Did you say want a cup of tea? I’ll go make one.’

He practically ran out of the room before he could even check with Triss if she wanted anything. She’d probably want a cup of tea, right? Everyone liked tea. As he went into the kitchen and put the kettle on, he noticed a newspaper laid out on the table, open at the crossword puzzle. The clue for 5 down caught his eye.

‘A saint has silver at the centre of the hectare. 6 letters.’

_Silver is ag, a hectare is ha, put the ‘at’ in the centre and you’ve got ‘Agatha’ - who’s a saint!_

Jaskier picked up the pen Geralt had left next to the paper and triumphantly wrote in the answer to the clue. He was starting to get the hang of this crossword thing! He sat down and scanned the other clues, looking for something else he could solve. Then the kettle boiled, and he remembered he had tea to make.

He carried two cups of tea into the living room, pushing the door open with his elbow. Triss was now attacking Geralt’s shoulders, and Geralt was making small moaning sounds that made Jaskier feel slightly uncomfortable. He left the cups on a side table and retreated upstairs as quickly as he could without spilling his own tea, and practised the lute while staring out of his window. His fingers found their way to a new sequence of notes, and he tentatively began to create a new song, about wandering over hillsides and moorland in the winter.

It was a bitterly cold Shrove Tuesday in Ashbourne, with snowflakes swirling in the air but not settling down. The Dandelion, the Devil, and the Little Eye were all bundled up in coats and wearing warm hats and fingerless gloves as they played - even Essi had been forced to concede that she couldn’t wear a glittery stage outfit when they had to perform on an outside stage in February.

Even with the gloves, Jaskier’s fingers were so cold he could barely play his lute. Not that it seemed to matter much - pretty much every one of the hundreds of people who were crowded into St John’s St and the marketplace was far too drunk to pay attention to the music being played for their benefit from the stage set up near the large, obvious and unfortunately somewhat racist sign for The Green Man and Black Head Royal Hotel. The pub was certainly doing a good trade selling endless pints of beer in plastic cups to the crowds who had gathered for the Shrovetide Football Game - although Jaskier had no idea where the centre of the action of the football game was at the current time, and he got the impression nobody else did either.

The Shrovetide Football Game was not a football game in any sense that any sane person would recognise. As Essi had said, it was basically an excuse for a riot, encompassing the entire town for two whole days. There were goalposts - several miles apart, in the river. There were teams - the Up’Ards and the Down’Ards - although they weren’t exactly defined, and anyone could randomly join in. There was a ball. There wasn’t a pitch, or a stadium, or many rules. And there were pubs.

The band had played to the hordes of real-ale drinkers at the Derby Winter Beer Festival, where Jaskier hadn’t had too many beers, thank you very much - and now they were here, in the freezing cold, playing to a bunch of drunken idiots who weren’t paying any attention anyway. When would they get to play to some people who actually cared about their carefully crafted music? Sure, they were getting paid to be here - but it might be nice to be appreciated too, as well as just paid in cash and beer, Jaskier thought.

They finished one song, and started to play the next one on their set list - which was song Jaskier had written himself since coming up to Derbyshire. He’d called it Winter Sojourn, and this was its first public performance. Not that anyone seemed to care. His numb fingers fumbled the opening notes, and he bit his lip in frustration. He looked up from the instrument, wondering if anyone would notice if they stopped playing altogether - and spotted a familiar white head at the edge of the crowd. Geralt had come here to see them play, despite the crowds, and as soon as he realised that, Jaskier found himself flexing his fingers and trying harder to actually form the correct notes. Geralt, he thought, would notice if he screwed up this song - he must have heard him practising it enough times.

Was it his imagination, or did his renewed energy communicate itself to Essi and Ciri as well? Maybe they were just relieved that the wind had finally died down a little, so their song wasn’t snatched straight from their lips and blown away down the street in an icy blast. They could get through this, and drink cold beers in a warm pub, and live to play another day.

Jaskier soon lost sight of Geralt as the crowd surged around him - the ball had appeared just down the street, bouncing on heads and shoulders as a scrum formed by the front of WH Smith (which had sensibly closed its doors for the day). The tightest knot of people moved further away, around the corner, chasing the ball back towards the river. When Jaskier next glanced up, he caught another glimpse of Geralt - who was now standing in relative isolation, leaning against the wall in the corner formed where the pedestrianised street went up towards the main market square.

Except - he wasn’t in relative isolation for long. Someone else was there with him, someone who Jaskier hadn’t seen coming, although she was pretty noticeable among all the Barbour jackets. A woman with long loose black hair, wearing a spectacular full-length silvery coat trimmed with fur. As with Triss, there was something about her -

_Another Sorceress._

And why shouldn’t Geralt hang out with sorceresses? He was a Witcher after all, even if he was retired. People who used magic weren’t the same as everyone else, they had their own stuff going on, and besides, Geralt had his own life, there was no reason he should spend all the time with his lodger and hired hand…

Jaskier’s fingers fumbled the notes again, and he cursed to himself. When he next looked up, Geralt and his sorceress were gone.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, all comments very welcome!


End file.
